Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Battlecruisers F2 & F3 (NB) - Guide 378" video.

  1. I've always felt a pair of F3s would've been more useful than the Nelsons. Particularly given that Britain's overly lightweight 16" shell wouldn't have been that much of an improvement in lethality over the excellent 15" shell fired out of a longer barrel. And in terms of accuracy and barrel life, the 16"/45 is actually a downgrade. But the substantial speed increase over the Nelsons (5.5 knots faster is a lot) with almost as good armor would've been incredibly useful.
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  2.  @Drachinifel  Collingwood is what I'd consider a Wargaming-invented "O2". A mashup of F2 and Nelson.
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  3.  @markknoxx7164  Collingwood is loosely based on them, but its more of a fictional "O2" design. It honestly surprises me that the proper F2 and F3 haven't already been sold as premiums.
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  4. Absolutely. Plus having a well-proven 15"/50 gun and triple turret already in service for a decade would've been an excellent argument for those who wanted 3x3 15" instead of 3x4 (or as ultimately built, 2x4 and 1x2) 14" on the KGVs.
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  5. They don't have the beauty of Hood, but they do have very similar capability (2.5 knots slower, but with an extra main gun, slightly better belt armor and significantly better deck armor) on nearly 8,000 tons less displacement.
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  6. And F3's firepower wouldn't really have even been any worse than the Nelsons', due to the very questionable design of Britain's 16" shells (which were much lighter than any other nation's shells of the same caliber). Since F3 would use the same shells out of her 15"/50s as the pre-treaty British BBs fired from their 15"/42s, that's a 1,938 lb APC shell with 48.5 lb bursting charge. While the British 16"/45 fired a 2,048 lb AP shell with a 51.2 lb bursting charge. That's much smaller than the difference between a 15" and 16" shell should be. And the 15"/42 guns were consistently more accurate than the Nelsons' 16"/45. If the 15"/50 were able to match the accuracy of the 15"/42 while giving the shells higher velocity, I'd take that over the 16"/45 any day. The tiny increase in lethality of the lightweight 16" shell wouldn't really matter if you're scoring hits more often with the 15" shell. And F3 with that 5.5 knots better speed than the Nelsons would still have excellent armor, so you're not losing very much to get that speed.
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  7. There probably would've also been a more forceful argument to go with a 15" armed version, on the basis of logistics. If the entire fleet is using 15" guns (rather than the logistics of multiple calibers already being something the Royal Navy was dealing with), why not still with what's working?
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  8. I'm pretty sure Britain would've been well-served if they had built these instead of the Nelson-class battleships.
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  9. This was a 1922 design. There definitely would've been more AA guns stacked on it had it been built.
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  10. No, I don't think any consideration was given to that. France had already been designing quad turrets prior to WW1 (though the ships that would've carried them were never completed as battleships and no 13.4" quads ever seem to have been built) and actually had never designed any battleship-caliber triple turret, so going with that layout on the Dunkerques and Richelieus was a natural progression. But Britain didn't look into the idea of quad turrets until the 1930s.
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